HOW ALCOHOL RETARDS DIGESTION.

HOW ALCOHOL RETARDS DIGESTION. 

And here, so as to grant those that don't seem to be at home with, the method of digestion, a transparent plan of that necessaryoperation, and therefore the impact made once alcohol is crazy food, we have a tendency to quote from the lecture of associate degreeEnglish Dr., Dr. Henry Monroe, on "The Physiological Action of Alcohol." He says: 

"Every quite substance used by man as food consists of sugar, starch, oil and viscous matters, mingled along in numerous proportions; these square measure designed for the support of the animal frame. The viscous principles of food fibrine, albumen and casein square measure used to make up the structure; whereas the oil, starch and sugar square measure primarily wont to generate heat within thebody. 

"The initiative of the method|biological process} process is that the breaking apart of the food within the mouth by suggests that of the jaws and teeth. On this being done, the saliva, a adhesive liquor, is poured into the mouth from the secretion glands, and because it mixes with the food, it performs a really necessary half within the operation of digestion, rendering the starch of the food soluble, and bit by bitdynamical it into a form of sugar, when that the opposite principles become a lot of compatible with it. Nearly a pint of secretion isfurnished with each mean solar day for the employment of associate degree adult. once the food has been masticated and mixed with the secretion, it's then passed into the abdomen, wherever it's acted upon by a juice secreted by the filaments of that organ, and poured into the abdomen in giant quantities whenever food comes in-tuned with its mucose coats. It consists of a dilute acid glorious to the chemists as acid, composed of gas and atomic number 17, united along in sure definite proportions. The digestive juice contains, also, a peculiar organic-ferment or mouldering substance, containing chemical element one thing of the character of yeast termed pepsine , thatis well soluble within the acid simply named. That digestive juice acts as a straightforward chemical solvent, is proven by the very factthat, when death, it's been glorious to dissolve the abdomen itself." 

It is miscalculation to suppose that, when a decent dinner, a glass of spirits or brewage assists digestion; or that any liquor containing alcohol even bitter tin can in any manner assist digestion. combine some bread and meat with internal organ juice; place them during aampoule, and keep that ampoule during a sand-bath at the slow heat of ninety eight degrees, sometimes shaking briskly the contents to imitate the motion of the stomach; you may notice, when six or eight hours, the complete contents amalgamated into one pultaceous mass. If to a different ampoule of food and digestive juice, treated within the same manner, I add a glass of ale or a amount of alcohol, at the tipof seven or eight hours, or maybe some days, the food is scarcely acted upon in any respect. this is often a fact; and if you're LED to raisewhy, I answer, as a result of alcohol has the peculiar power of with chemicals touching or mouldering the digestive juice by causativeone among its principal constituents, viz., pepsine, rendering its solvent properties a lot of less efficacious. therefore alcohol can't bethought-about either as food or as a solvent for food. Not because the latter actually, for it refuses to act with the digestive juice. 

"'It could be a outstanding reality,' says Dr. Dundas Thompson, 'that alcohol, once adscititious to the juice, produces a white precipitate,so the fluid is not any longer capable of digesting animal or substance.' 'The use of alcoholic stimulants,' say Drs. Todd and expert, 'retards digestion by coagulating the pepsine, a necessary part of the digestive juice, and thereby intrusive with its action. Were it not that wine and spirits square measure quickly absorbed, the introduction of those into the abdomen, in any amount, would be a whole bar to the digestion of food, because the pepsine would be precipitated from the answer as quickly because it was fashioned by the abdomen.' Spirit, in anyamount, as a dietary adjunct, is pernicious on account of its antiseptic qualities, that resist the digestion of food by the absorption of water from its particles, in direct antagonism to chemical operation."